by Travis Mateer
Well, the verdict is in. After first getting paid $46,000 dollars all the way back in August of 2020, Spider McKnight and her Six Pony Hitch consulting firm has proposed a solution to Ellen and Company not speaking good.
What creative fix took two years to come up with, you ask? Hire a communication specialist. That’s it. That’s the fucking plan.
The Missoula Redevelopment Agency’s board has approved a recommendation to hire a full-time communications specialist to engage the public about the millions of dollars worth of tax increment financing projects the agency approves every years.
On Thursday, the board voted unanimously to recommend that the position be included in the agency’s fiscal year 2022 budget and directed staff to initiate the hiring process. The position will be advertised with a starting salary range of $52,000 to $78,000 per year.
When you read further in the article, you get a little more information about the fact there were other ideas out there.
Last year, the agency allocated $46,000 for a strategic communications plan. The consultant hired for that plan, Christina “Spider” McKnight, made a series of recommendations to the board. One of the recommendations was to hire a communications specialist.
Cool recommendation, Christina. Kinda like the nickname I thought was your real name. Something else that’s cool is the campaign electronic reporting system that shows this Spidery recipient of Tax Increment Financing once provided a strategic political donation to GREAT LEADER and other members of the GREAT party leading Missoula into a bright future!
Well done, Spider McKnight! I’m so glad people like you get tens of thousands of TAX dollars and TWO WHOLE YEARS to help not-good-speaking Ellen Buchanan arrive at the grand vision of hire another government-paid communication specialist.
Just another glorious day in Zoom Town! Have a great weekend, peasants!
JC
You mean all I need is to give Engen a $100 donation and I can get a huge kickback in the form of a city project? Wow! I don’t need any qualifications or previous experience with the job? And there’s no bidding process either?! Wow! Your knowledge of city contracting is astounding.
Giving a donation might not get you a contract. But not donating can definitely work against your odds of getting it. And donating to a person in the opposite party only can nuke your chances of getting a contract. The best chances of getting up the next rung in the ladder of politically motivated opportunism is to donate to both parties and both candidates. That way they know you’re malleable and flexible. And then when it comes time to get the big job, you have to swear off the other party…
Thought this was all common knowledge.
You mean all I need is to ignore the significance of political donations and I can obfuscate the cronyism responsible for huge kickbacks on city projects? Wow! And the bidding process remains nothing but a legal formality?! Nothing to see here? Wow! Concern Troll’s sardonic attempts toward dismantling debate about local corruption by punching down is what seems astounding.
I am perplexed that this is the only place that I can find documented information about what the hell is going on in my home town. We used to have a newspaper, and I read Currents, but when it counts, I come here. That is a sad, sad statement. Nothing personal. Keep it coming.
Eventually, the law of entropy says that Missoula will devolve into some weird hell, like Portland is now from where my nephew calls late at night wondering what he can do about the fact that there is no law and order and there are homeless drug encampments surrounding the metro down the street from his house. We didn’t educate him well enough in Missoula, so he doesn’t understand the structure of his own government, so I had to give him a primer on his local & state government. My advice was to get his neighborhood organized, show up at the council meetings and if that doesn’t work after 6 months, burn the house down and blame it on the homeless druggies. The straw that broke the camel’s back was that his neighbor was shot in the head as one of the druggies’ bullets came through her bedroom wall. She’s OK, but this used to be a nice little Portland neighborhood. They saved their money for years to be able to afford a house, and now they live in hell.
I watch a lot of off-the-grid builder shows wondering if I can stand living in the middle of nowhere. I’d prefer not to. I’d really like to retire after 30 years of running a business in Missoula and golf on my favorite mature golf course, but it doesn’t look good for me, so we look elsewhere.
Thanks for doing the dirty work of actually reporting the local news, and even though there is an obvious bias, who really cares anymore? That’s all I get from anyone else anyway, so I might as well go with the biases I agree with. That’s my way of thanking you for your efforts.
Thank you, and I absolutely agree you shouldn’t have to come to a little blog to get a more honest, critical perspective on local developments. I make my mistakes, wear my biases on my sleeve, and no one is paying me to blow smoke up your ass.
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